1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method of selecting program information by use of voice recognition.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the number of television channels has greatly increased. As a result, it has become troublesome to select a television program by pressing a button on a remote control unit. A proposed method to solve the above problem is to select a television program according to a voice selection command uttered by a user by using voice recognition. However, the voice recognition has a problem that there is a non-negligible probability that a recognition result is incorrect. If a voice selection command is incorrectly recognized, a wrong television program will be selected. This greatly deteriorates usability. In an attempt to control of a device by using voice recognition and to avoid the above problem, it has been proposed to present a defined number of candidates having high likelihood as the result of voice recognition whereby a user is allowed to select a desired channel from the presented candidates (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-022374). For example, as shown in FIG. 8, candidates derived from a voice recognition result are displayed in the form of a list. If a user selects a desired channel from the voice recognition result list with a GUI such as a cursor or the like, a television program is switched in accordance with the selection made by the user.
However, television programs are broadcast in real time in the form of stream information from television stations, and users want to view a desired program as quickly as possible. In the technique using voice recognition, selecting of a correct television channel from a list of candidates for the correct channel may require a relatively long time for a user to select and view a desired program, which can cause the user to miss important information.
In the technique of searching for still images by using voice recognition, it has been proposed to select candidates for a correct still image and display all selected candidates in the form of images instead of displaying a list. By analogy, in selection of a television program by using voice recognition, it may be advantageous to select candidates for a correct program and display all candidates in the form of thumbnail images or the like so that a user is allowed to select a desired program from the displayed thumbnail images. If the user selects a program, the selected program is displayed in a full screen mode. However, the limit on the number of tuners installed on a television set makes it difficult to display all candidates at the same time.